downgrade to snow leopard or use parallels?

[juliane]

hi, what's the best solution to continue to use freehand on a mac with10.7 (lion) system? downgrade it to 10.6 (snow leopard) or install parallels with 10.6 as a secondary system?

i appreciate any thoughts. thank you.

[FFH Mark]

I'd say install Parallels if you use FreeHand somewhat regularly. If you depend on it daily for work, stick with 10.6.8. I'm in the later camp myself.

[FH Addict]

Yes stick with 10.6.8 if you really work with FreeHand otherwise you will lose/waste time and productivity.

[FFH Thü]

I always say, there is no reason to use Lion or Mountain Lion. For me, Snow Leopard has all I need and I have all my necessary software up and running, will not ever have to be manipulated by Adobe to sign up for their cloud apps or ever pay for upgrades. The next thing I will probably do is building my own Hackintosh. But basically, my MacMini 2.4GHz Core Duo with SSD has still all the power I need.

[cyclopsdx]

Yes, stick with Snow Leopard. I installed Parallels on my main working machine which runs Mountain Lion but am having the 'disappearing cursor' problem and the programme just feels a little inconsistent when I'm using it. I'd consider it 'worst-case' scenario.

Luckily, I have a spare machine in the studio which cannot be upgraded to ML, so I've installed it on there and it works perfectly. It will be running FreeHand until Apple introduce an OS which is incompatible with Snow Leopard!

[koehler]

Is there no solution coming to solve the 'disappearing cursor' problem? Any Ideas?

[saschabierl]

But basically, my MacMini 2.4GHz Core Duo with SSD has still all the power I need.

Not working for me, and I think I´m not alone, because I work not only with vector software but also with 3D and I have to run the latest version here - so I have to upgrade hardware from time to time.

[herold]

Because of the "disappearing cursor" and "flaky modifier key behavior", I have been forced to use FreeHand in Windows 7 under Parallels.
Upgrading to Parallels Desktop 9 (just out), I think I'm ready to return to FreeHand on Mac OS X Server 10.6. The modifier key behavior is more snappy and consistent. Whereas the cursor icon may not always update, the functionality is definitely better. For instance, holding the Apple/Command key with any tool selected, will consistently modify to "Pointer/Select" tool. With Parallels 8 it wouldn't. Also th e Zoom shortcuts are working better (Option/Command/Space). We all know how crucial this is to an efficient workflow
Try it out!
BR Lars Herold

Mac Mini 2GHz Intel Core i7 Mac OS X 10.8.4
Parallels Desktop 9, Mac OS X Server 10.6.8
FreeHand MX 11.0.2